Light front dynamics of one boson exchange models of the two-nucleon system

A general procedure for constructing front form, one boson exchange models for the two-nucleon system is developed. The procedure entails the construction of a mass-square operator which when used in conjunction with a free spin operator leads to an exactly Poincaré invariant model. An exchange model involving π, η, ρ, ω, δ, and σ mesons is constructed, and calculations of nucleon-nucleon phase shifts and deuteron properties are carried out. A comparison with the Bonn B potential, and a fit to a recent nucleon-nucleon phase shift analysis are presented.